


The Adventures of Captain Neal of Star Command

by rabidchild67



Series: Kid!Neal Chronicles [4]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen, Kid Fic, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 09:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/pseuds/rabidchild67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal and Satchmo spend the day in Neal's imagination; Elizabeth is a reluctant, if amused, participant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventures of Captain Neal of Star Command

**Author's Note:**

> Timestamp in my “Kid Neal Chronicles." It is not necessary to have read the other stories to figure this one out: Neal has been deaged and it is not reversible; he is 5 in this story.

Birds chirp. Sun shines. Neal wakes each day with a laugh on his lips and a plan for the day already laid out. Elizabeth can barely keep up with the energetic 5-yr old, but she is happy to see that Satchmo can.

The Lab is certainly not on his last legs, but he’s getting up there in years, and though she’d still have Neal back to his “old” self if she could, she’s not going to argue with the obvious benefits of having an active boy in the house, particularly for the family dog. Satch has taken to sleeping beside Neal's bed iat night – though the yellow hairs she finds on Neal's jammies and in the bedding prove there’s a bit more to that story – and is by his side as the boy begins each day. Neal bounds out of bed, drops to his knees beside the dog to bestow day-greeting hugs and kisses, then darts off to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Satch hauls himself to his feet – there’s no mistaking the old guy’s joints aren’t what they used to be, but if he’s got more energy these days because of Neal, El’s not complaining.

It’s a typical summer morning – that is to say, Neal has gotten dressed, consumed his breakfast of oatmeal and fruit with more gusto than his adult self ever managed, and sits with Satch at the edge of the living room, arm thrown across doggy shoulders as they make plans for their day. 

“What are you up to today, Neal?” El calls to him.

He looks at her with his large, blue eyes and blinks lashes so long and lush they might as well belong to a Disney character, and answers with all seriousness: “Mars needs Moms.”

“Martians? Moms?”

“They lost their most important resources,” he says as if he were debriefing her (“resources”? what was this vocabulary?), “and they are after ours.”

“Oh no, well, we’d better alert all the Moms in the neighborhood – wouldn’t want them to be kidnapped.” She rises, makes for the door. 

His small hand on her sleeve stays her. “ _All_ the Moms,” he says gravely, eyeing her significantly, and it’s a good thing that he runs off in search of weapons, because the look of astonishment on her face when he says it probably makes her look like an idiot.

It hasn’t been that long since she’d become the boy’s self-appointed guardian, along with her husband; a freak (what – accident? curse?) _occurrence_ transformed her friend into a three-year old just over twenty months ago; but she still has some difficulty thinking of herself as anyone’s mother. Peter and she had petitioned the state to adopt the boy – no cure or way to reverse the deaging had come to light – and she supposed she ought to start getting used to the idea of someone thinking of her as “Mom.” 

Shaking her head, she gets back to work on the laundry – she’s got a conference call with a client in an hour, and the only reason her eyes burn and sting is _because it’s dry in here,_ all right?

\----

Two hours later, Neal is in the basement playing, and Elizabeth is sorting through her email, having forgotten the Martian invasion already, when she hears him rummaging around in the boxes of Peter’s old crap from his boyhood. Minutes later, the sound of Converse running up the wooden stairs, followed by the clik-clik-clik of doggy nails precedes Neal's reappearance in the kitchen. 

“Satchmo found it!” he proclaims, brandishing some old bit of plastic. It is the old Star Trek phaser Peter played with as a boy, complete with small, disc-shaped plastic “charges” to be flung by the thing through the air. “Our ultimate defense!”

Satchmo huffs and woofs as if in agreement, marching in place on his front paws.

“Thank God! We’re saved!” Elizabeth proclaims a bit too enthusiastically, but Neal's small face is grave.

“Not yet, Mommy. First we must set up a perimeter of protection.”

“Okay?” she says, turning in her seat at the dining room table to watch as he begins to pull all of the cushions off the couch, Satchmo pushing the larger ones from the back of the couch with his nose as if he is helping. Neal arranges them on their sides on the floor and motions for El to join them. 

“Come,” he says, his hand beckoning her with all the self-assuredness of a real space cowboy, “you will be safe here.” 

She walks into the living room. “What’s this?” she asks.

“Fortifications,” he informs her, ushering her to the cushion fort with a small hand on her hip. “They are impenetrable.”

“Of course they are.”

He motions for her to sit – she does so, legs crossed and back straight – then stands in front of her. “They will never take you,” he vows. “Not while Captain Neal draws breath.”

“I have faith in you,” she answers just as seriously.

He takes up a position behind one of the cushions at the front of the structure, Satchmo at his side, tail wagging as he sits alertly on his haunches, watching Neal expectantly. There is a footfall outside – El knows it is the day’s mail, it’s 11:30 and this is when Maryann, their mail carrier, usually arrives – and she sees Neal's small body stiffen. 

“It’s them,” he says over his shoulder. He grasps Satchmo by the scruff of the neck and leans forward. “Get ready, faithful friend.”

 _Faithful friend? Where does he get this stuff?_ El wonders as she watches Maryann’s shadow lengthen against the frosted glass of the front door. 

“They’re here!” Neal shouts as the mail slot opens and the day’s mail hits the floor in their vestibule. “Satch! They have deployed their primary weapon. We must disengage it immediately or risk certain destruction!” 

Satchmo gets to his feet and advances a step toward the door, barking once and getting down on his front paws, chest resting on the floor. 

“Good man!” Neal praises him, then raises his weapon. “We must stop their advance so we can take out that weapon! _Pew_!” he lets cheap plastic shots fly, though they don’t quite make it as far as the door El notices, but who is she to point that out? “Pew-pew-PEW!”

Crouching, he grasps Satchmo by the scruff of the neck and they advance on the front door. “Come, Satchmo,” Neal says with way too much intensity for a boy his age. “We will defend our Mom with our very lives if we must!”

Satchmo licks his chops but advances along with Neal. El, if she hadn’t been on the floor, would be on the edge of her seat as this little drama plays out.

“Pew!”

They advance another step, and another.

“Pew-pew!”

Satchmo freezes as a delivery truck rumbles past, reflected sunlight dancing against the front windows. As if on cue, he surges forward, paws sliding on the hardwoods as they gain purchase, and scrambles for the front door, Neal not far behind. Satch stops just short of the front door, noses at the largest of the envelopes on the floor; El recognizes the packaging as that of the online commerce outfit where she orders Satch’s flea medication – they typically pack a dog biscuit along with every purchase. Satch picks it up and begins to shake it.

“Yes! Satchmo – you must disarm the weapon before it is too late! We must save our Mom at all costs!” Neal is gesturing erratically, but then suddenly he stands up tall, points a finger at the dog and yells dramatically, “BANG YOU’RE DEAD!” 

Taking his cue (and El curses the day Peter taught their dog this trick, she really does, but at least here it’s being put to practical use), Satchmo immediately drops the envelope and falls to the floor, head resting on his paws.

“No, Satch! NOOOOO!” Neal yells, falling to his knees beside his fallen sidekick, arms thrown over his furry back as he buries his face in the soft, yellow fur.

El joins them. “What happened?” she asks, because hell if she knows.

“He gave his life. To save us,” Neal pronounces, then raises himself to his knees and salutes the dog. “Your great sacrifice will not go unnoticed, Commander Satchmo of Star Command.”

“He is our greatest hero,” El agrees, and their dramatic tableau holds until she asks, “Who wants hot dogs for lunch?”

\----

That night, El sits with her husband over the remains of their dinner, a glass of wine in her hand, as they watch Neal and Satchmo in the living room. The boy lies with his head resting on the dog’s flank, watching his favorite cartoon.

“How was _your_ day?” Peter asks. They’d already discussed his day – the pointless office politics, the frustratingly slow progress on his latest case. 

“You know – the usual stuff. Conference call on the Hennessey wedding, laundry, Satchmo saved the world from certain annihilation, bought lottery tickets.”

“Saved the world, huh? That’s a big day.”

She shrugs. “Neal called me ‘Mommy.’”

“You don’t say,” Peter says slowly.

She pauses, looks him in the eyes, then her eyes shift to the living room, where the object of their conversation’s face is lit up by the glow of the television. “I never thought I’d like the sound of that.”

“It’s nice, huh?”

Her heart is to full, but she manages to choke the word out anyway, “Very.”

\----

Thank you for your time.


End file.
